Holy cow, Ed Zitron can write about the careening rolling disaster that is the useful knowledge of the web being rendered useless by the glue-factories of modern search
(1/2) I block ads on both Facebook and YouTube. So far, my ad-blocking technology has kept ahead of their ad-blocking-blocking technology.
If it ever becomes infeasible to block ads, I'll just greatly reduce or stop my use of those platforms.
I agree that personal use of ad blockers is not a good solution. I am in favor of drastic measures such as outlawing Meta and Google's business models. Make it illegal to offer something for "free" in return for data collection.
@trochee (2/2) Instead, force Internet services with more than (say) 100,000 subscribers to charge a monthly fee for service and in turn forbid them from advertising to paying users, and forbid them from using algorithmic tricks to show users anything other than posts they're interested in (by virtue of being friends with the poster, for example) and only in reverse-chronological order.
That number of subscribers is about 10x larger than a @older centenal, while we're dreaming about alternative models of collective governance of information.
@trochee This is all good and useful. I would also like more written about the tools available now to shrink these amounts of money. Adblockers work and they should be a lot more widespread.
Add comment